from Hacker News

The "Take It Down" Act

by panarky on 3/6/25, 12:30 AM with 99 comments

• by userbinator on 3/6/25, 1:10 AM

  Whichever the ruling party is, it seems to never be one that actually supports free speech.

• by kibwen on 3/6/25, 1:32 AM

  Taking bets on how soon until DOGE takes down this page: https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-1/

• by thrance on 3/6/25, 1:51 AM

  So called "free speech absolutists" the minute they get into power...

  An an European often arguing with Americans on whichever definition of free speech is best, that's what always bugged me. It doesn't matter what your law says when people who don't respect the law gain power. They won't protect their opponents free speech.

  Punishing hate speech does not lead to political censorship, authoritarianism does.

• by rqtwteye on 3/6/25, 2:01 AM

  It seems they really are taking inspiration from 1933 "Gleichschaltung". It looks like they want to control everything. Has any incoming administration ever made so many sweeping changes in such short time?

• by Animats on 3/6/25, 2:51 AM

  Here's the current Senate bill.[1] (passed) Current House bill.[2] (introduced) Last year's Senate bill [3] (passed).

  This bill has been kicking around for a while, with bipartisan support. This passed the Senate last December, and the new bill seems to be a duplicate of the old.

  The take-down procedure mirrors the DMCA, but there is no corresponding put-back procedure. That's the real problem. With the DMCA, you can fight a take-down with a counter-notice. Then the copyright claimant has to go to court. There's nothing like that in this bill.

  A solution for social site operators: if Trump tries to abuse this: use a classifier to find images of all major administration officials and just blank them out.

  [1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/146

  [2] https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/633

  [3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/senate-bill/456...

• by 9283409232 on 3/6/25, 2:31 AM

  I made a comment on this already but I do want to add that everyone should call their representatives. It does work and house reps are much more vulnerable than senators so you have more leverage with them.

• by Banditoz on 3/6/25, 1:25 AM

  The article says it passed the Senate.. does it have a chance to pass the House?

• by SpicyLemonZest on 3/6/25, 2:23 AM

  A lot of people in the comments here who I would perhaps advise to click into the text of the bill. I respect the EFF's privacy concerns, but I don't agree that victims of revenge porn should have to wait for a service provider to carefully verify their claims before getting a takedown processed, although I do hope the House offers amendments to clarify that encrypted messaging apps don't need to institute surveillance to comply.

• by LAC-Tech on 3/6/25, 1:47 AM

  America is one of the last bastions of free speech left. Stuff like this, the tik tok ban, and the "anti-semitism" laws, are very disturbing developments.

• by waltercool on 3/6/25, 2:14 AM

  The issue and reason about this law is, what happens when some teenager post naked photos of some ex girlgriend at internet.

  While I don't care much about AI deepfakes, revenge porn can be very harmful to women, at the point of considering suicide.

  This needs to be normalized at some point. While I don't like what Germany usually does, privacy about private photos/videos need to be respected

• by explodes on 3/6/25, 1:11 AM

  The "Take Action" link leads to "Bad Gateway"

• by sebazzz on 3/6/25, 3:15 AM

  I curious. Nearly everything has been done through decretes until now. Why choose the difficult path by actually letting this go through the Senate and House?

• by 9283409232 on 3/6/25, 2:28 AM

  When you combine this with the upcoming death of Section 230, what you have is Elon, Trump and their network of liars being able to spread bullshit nonstop but then they will be able to target anyone who tries to hold them accountable.

• by IAmGraydon on 3/6/25, 2:19 AM

  Like all draconian measures, they use the guise of a good cause to pass a law that they fully intend to abuse. This law was "intended" to put a stop to deepfakes and revenge porn, but we have the president openly admitting that he intends to use it for himself. From Trump last night:

  >I look forward to signing that bill into law. And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.

  Unless Trump is concerned about NCII involving his likeness (he's not), he's openly admitting what this law is actually for - to silence opposition.

• by jauntywundrkind on 3/6/25, 2:31 AM

  The recent example of someone putting political commentary on display at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) shows a bit of how this plays out. (The fact that it was un-authorizedly pirated onto the displays at a federal building is a separate topic; I'm focusing here on the content).

  BlueSky took down all the videos of it playing around the office. Because it was AI generated. It wasn't clear whether it was (a video of) a real video or not.

  But if that video had been done by an artist? If it had been a comic? That would have been acceptable content to keep on the social network, most likely.

  There's a lot of cases where I do think computer generated imagery is personally harmful and dangerous and should have some checks. And I definitely fear it's use politically, if we see videos that credulously seem to be a politician doing something they wouldn't do, performing speech they didn't do. Yet, in this example, it feels like there was little risk that the video would be taken seriously. It felt like clear political satire. But this law proposes that we outlaw political satire, purely because computer generation tools helped make the satire. That seems... not good.

  This guy already claiming he's going to use it to take down videos of him feels like it will radically chill commentary & expression of thought that people have a right to make.

• by 93po on 3/6/25, 5:25 PM

  It's disappointing that the EFF is getting into partisan politics instead of staying out of it. Trump sucks and I'm not defending him, but it's really tiresome when people quote him and infer meaning that he super obviously did not mean. His quote:

  > And I’m going to use that bill for myself too if you don’t mind, because nobody gets treated worse than I do online, nobody.

  to which the EFF writes:

  > Trump when he says he would use the Take It Down Act simply because he's "treated badly,"

  It is such a massive stretch to interpret his words this way. Trump is clearly talking about fake/doctored/AI footage of himself. Trump is not going to try to use this bill to make people stop saying mean things about him on twitter.

  Can we please hold people accountable for the real, problematic, hateful things they do, instead of inventing stuff that isn't real? It really damages the credibility of a group when they do this.

  This is the "fine people on both sides" all over again - a quote where Trump literally said in the NEXT SENTENCE: "And I don't mean nazis and white supremacists", and everyone clipped out that part and hyperbolized to "trump literally said nazis are fine people" when it's the opposite of what he said

• by wewewedxfgdf on 3/6/25, 2:18 AM

  Very interesting times to live in.